Good Day Good Evening
by Anti-Logic
Summary: Prussia, a heavy dose of surrealism, and the fall of an empire. Written for the kink meme; light PruAus. "Someone asks if he'd like to play chess. Gilbert thinks it over and figures, why not."
1. Chapter 1

Wrote this one for the kink meme, mostly over the summer. It's got a good dose of what-the-hell-is-going-on, but things will gradually get clearer, and the writing, in my own opinion, gets better as I go. I'll post it up in I believe four parts, cleaning it up a bit from the original. Warnings for Gilbert's foul mouth.

I do not own Hetalia. Enjoy!

* * *

It's night be the flame  
And the red that colors the clouds  
Good day sir Good evening madam  
You don't look your age

What does it matter if your embraces  
Make the twin stars bleed  
What does it matter if your face is painted  
if hoarfrost glitters on the branches

Of granite or marble  
Your age will show  
And the shade of the great trees  
will walk on your graves.

-"Good Day Good Evening," Robert Desnos

* * *

Today Gilbert spends time at the _Wehrmacht_ offices at the capitol building in Berlin, then goes out with Francis and Antonio. He jumps a quick flight out to Barcelona because his travel is more or less paid for by the government and because he _can, _and the three of them rampage about in fine style, visiting a bar, a museum (at Francis's insistence) and a club. Generally he has a good day, and by the time he gets back to Ludwig's house he's humming loudly through the dark, a freeform mockery of something Bach that had been playing at the museum.

When he opens the door Ludwig is at the kitchen table, forehead resting none-too-restfully in his hands, blonde hair sticking up all along the edges. He's poring over maps and telegrams, and Feliciano sits across from him, folding paper airplanes from important diagrams. The brunette waves, and Gilbert gives him the special smile reserved just for him.

"Ve, Prussia, look!"

"Yeah, they're really good."

"No, I mean there's still pasta on the stove, if you're hungry."

"Awesome!"

He ignores his brother's heavy "Do you have any idea what time it is" and heaps the cooled noodles onto a plate. Ludwig finally looks up and notices the wreckage that was once the design of a 5I 156.

"_Italy!"_

"What? But Germany, it was a _plane _paper, I just made it a real – noooo, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!"

Gilbert snorts and pulls up a chair, shoving the noodles into his mouth contentedly. They didn't officially ever stop to eat this evening, besides an appetizer at the bar. "Lay offa the kid," he says through a mouthful of fettuccini.

"We've been over this, he's not a _kid-_" Ludwig is awfully tall when he stands. Some would find it imposing.

"Doesn't make you less of one."

"Gilbert that doesn't even make any sense-"

"S'true, though." He swallows and burps loudly. Ludwig deepens his glare, but it's late and apparently he's tired, because he doesn't say anything past that. Instead he sinks back into his seat with a heavy sigh, pointlessly rearranging a few of the topmost papers as Feliciano eyes his pencils. Gilbert thinks it's an awful lot of trouble nowadays to go to war.

The front door bursts open and is instantly filled with Italian rage as Romano storms over to collect his brother.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, keeping him here so late? You better not touch him, you bastard, or I swear I'll rip you a new one!"

Ludwig barely looks up.

"I wasn't keeping him. He stayed-"

"You think I fucking care? C'mon, Feli." He glares at the German brothers, then at the papers themselves as if they had done him some great personal harm. Gilbert is sure to give him a predatory leer, just to put him on edge – it works. Romano grabs his brother's hand and practically drags him towards the door, casting murderous looks over his shoulder as Feliciano sings a goodbye. They can hear the two arguing down the front walk even after the door slams.

"_Fratello_, that wasn't nice."

"Shove it! D'you know what time it is?"

"No…what time _is _it?"

"Hell if I know!"

Gilbert laughs and works on finishing his pasta, while Ludwig goes back to his papers in an almost relieved manner. The seconds slide by, Ludwig squinting down at his work through eyes darkened from lack of sleep. It is far, far too much trouble to go to war these days.

Gilbert slurps noisily to break the silence. "So how long until Poland?"

Ludwig grunts, and Gilbert takes that to mean that he's still not sure. He thinks that it would be much better for his brother if he were less meticulous in his plans; everything has to be perfect down to how the men clean their damn socks. Gilbert is excited for war, to be honest – a break from routine, an old enemy to invade. Feliks doesn't stand a chance. Ludwig is stiff and disciplined, but he doesn't quite understand the blood rush that's supposed to come with an invasion; the ancient, primal stuff of the humans that make them up. Glory, pride, those things he understands. But it's not _wild _for him, never outside the lines. And that practically defeats the purpose.

He eyes his brother's drooping posture, eyelids fighting to fall even as he sits with black coffee looming before him.

"Go to bed, Luddy."

"These letters-"

"Can wait."

"What time is it?"

"Doesn't matter."

Ludwig gives him a long, studying look. Gilbert laughs.

"You take yourself too seriously. Get some sleep."

Ludwig smiles slightly, sheepishly, as he stands. "_Gute nacht_, then."

"Yeah. Sweet dreams."

Ludwig straightens a few last papers and heads up the stairs, and the world is silent now, the lighted kitchen a content little enclave in the darkened house.

Gilbert leans back in his chair and hums his Bach mockery.

Someone asks if he'd like to play chess.

Gilbert thinks it over and figures, why not.

-x-

Roderich's piano sounds out of tune. He's playing as brilliantly as ever, of course, something sickeningly slow and Gilbert thinks it's Beethoven. Symmetrical, strictly in rhythm, with only brief moments where the music reaches a deadened pace and then goes back to merely a _crawling_ pace to break the monotony. Gilbert prefers jazz these days. It's hot and new and blaring out of clubs all over Berlin, jungle-wild and brassy in the lungs and hands of the young.

Roderich, of course, wouldn't understand these things. Gilbert's ears pull his melodies out of sludge water. Lukewarm rhythm and a quicksand tempo.

He's sprawled over the obnoxiously stiff sofa in Ludwig's sitting room where they've put the piano, one foot slung defiantly over the armrest despite all warnings. This is a good way to unwind, after a long morning of avoiding his brother and his work until he finally leaves for the day, papers neatly pressed into a folder in a binder in a briefcase beneath his arm. Gilbert avoids the capitol and all its bureaucracy when he can, lazing about with a cooled beer, making off-color comments to the thoroughly stiff back sitting on the piano bench in front of him.

"Roddy, I'm surprised at you."

"Do tell." The voice is, expectedly, dripping with dismissive sarcasm.

"You're letting your piano go all wonky. Flat."

There is no hesitation in the meandering melody. "You must be mistaken."

"No. No, I'm right. It's off." It isn't anything that he can place, exactly, and Roderich would probably put that down to him not being "classically trained," but he knows there's something a bit jarring woven under a chord here and there.

"Gilbert, despite my respect for your…obvious musical genius, I must insist. My piano is always perfectly tuned." Not even a twitch in that flat-board back, which Gilbert finds slightly irritating.

"Really? 'Cause there's something-"

"_Forgive me," _the voice is strained over the crescendo, that's more like it, "for not trusting your sense of pitch."

Gilbert grins and takes a swig. "mmHey, all I'm saying-"

"Don't you have something to _do _with yourself? An invasion to help plan?"

"Luddy's pretty much got it now." He strains to hear the song get louder, or the sharpness of an angry staccato. Roderich, try as he might, can't ever prevent jumping into the song himself just a little bit. Disappointingly, the song remains soft, blunt, and slow as the pianist falls back to sudden silence. And something pinches at him, just beneath the surface.

-x-

The chess pieces are spread like a tactical ghost town, struggling to regain definition in the half-light of the parlor table. Gilbert sits with his chin on his hand, interest quickly flatlining. He has played this game a thousand times over, with princes, queens, foreign dignitaries, nations themselves. He understands the rules, and much of the strategy. Back when it was in vogue he even enjoyed the game, sometimes. But the world has changed, and there are a thousand more interesting diversions than a simple board, checkered white and black and white. Or gray, in the shadow. It's all a jumbled mess anyway.

"Are you gonna move or wait until wood rot sets in?" He taps his fingers against his cheek to accentuate his point.

"Be patient. This game requires thought."

"Guess that's not a strong point of yours, huh?"

"Very clever. Ah, I see it now."

Gilbert waits a few more moments for the next move, but the stillness extends, only the steady, dark wooden ticking of the grandfather clock behind him penetrating the quiet.

"Thought you said you knew."

"I do – but not that. Gilbert, you should really remember where the pieces are." Gilbert frowns, slightly offended. He's not even losing, really. Not by much.

"I remember! Why the-"

"You should remember _better." _

"Why the hell do I have to remember _better?_"

"Because_. J__edem das Seine. _Anyway, do you know what time it is?_"_

-x-

"…Fall, fall down! And here the verdict: 'The dancer will be executed the following morning while doing a dance step with her gems sacrificed to the heat of her body: The blood of the gems, soldiers!"

The French is liquid-smooth, the nonsense trickling into Gilbert's inattentive ears. Francis stands with his hands behind his back, perhaps a habit left over from poetry recitations of old, soft eyes roaming the bright museum. Antonio isn't quite listening either. He's looking very intently at the painting in front of him, muted browns and blues and yellows.

"I can't quite remember the rest. A bit like your Dalí, _non?_"

Antonio nods fervently, still not able to drag his eyes away from the canvas. Gilbert can't see what's quite so wonderful about clocks melting on a beach, but he figured as much would happen if he were dragged to a museum with these two. They'realways more up on the artistic trends. A bit womanish, but that's Francis and Antonio and they've always sort of been that way.

"You two are boring," he says, because it's true. Francis waves a hand, and as if by secret signal a strange, tiny anger burrows into the back of Gilbert's brain.

"Surrealism is hardly boring, Gilbert. It's a wonderful trend. Like trapping the inner workings of the mind." He's wearing his Cultured look now, and Gilbert misses the chance to cut him off at the head of things. "Dalí truly is a master painter, but I have some remarkable poets that do quite well with their pens."

Gilbert laughs, purposefully abrasive. "_That _shit? That was art?"

"Of course it is." And there's that snooty nose in the air, indignant. "You have no culture. Robert Desnos is-"

"Desnos! Oh, I know him!" Spain finally turns away from _La persistencia de la memoria, _smiling hugely. "He did… 'Good Day Good Evening,' I think."

"_Oui, _that was his, he has the ability to fall under a trance, you know. It's all about the subconscious, did you know that he's-"

And while normally Gilbert has little to no interest in hearing his friends talk about art, the anger is new, small and niggling and pointed directly at Francis and his curling lip, his fine cheekbones.

It startles him, and he crosses his arms and scans Dalí's masterpiece, clocks like strange, dying creatures drooping over branches and a giant, distorted face, lying like some great dead beast. There's a piano playing somewhere and it's plodding along and starting to give him a headache, and there is a pocket watch in the corner of the painting, honey gold and covered in crawling, swarming black ants.

"Ah! I remember the next part," Francis's voice – was it always so haughtily nasal? – cuts back in. "And what then, the mirror yet! Mistress you black square, and if the clouds all at once forgetmenot, they mills in the ever present eternity."

Antonio makes admiring sounds, but Gilbert doesn't understand a word.

"Can we go now? It's evening and you said we'd be back in Barcelona half an hour ago."

Francis sighs huffily. "Oh? What time is it?" Gilbert feels a disconcerting sense of déjà vu.

Antonio just laughs, points to the dying clocks.

-x-

He finds Elizaveta after her shopping in the early afternoon, paper bags full to bursting. She's headed in the same direction as he is, to Ludwig's house. It's a little sad that Roderich still needs his ex-wife to look after his day-to-day needs after all this time. Not that Gilbert is really complaining; Roderich doesn't get all of the treats to himself. Ludwig's house is growing busier lately.

He sidles up behind her. She gives him a firm "no" before he can even ask for a peek.

"What? I just wanted to see- _ow _that was my foot what the _fuck-_"

"This isn't for _you, _Gilbert."

"You bitch."

"Dumb bastard."

"Crazy whore."

"I'm not stooping to your level." The words come out more sing-song than she probably intended.

"Too late."

She makes a small, indignant sound and sinks into an icy silence. With that out of the way they walk in relative peace. Summer is fringing into fall, and the days in Germany are less oppressive in their heat. Any day now, Gilbert will get to remember what the weather is like for the season in Poland.

With the house in sight, Elizaveta reluctantly breaks the silence, each word seeming to blame him for her question.

"What time is it?"

Gilbert stops, nearly trips. When she turns to look at him he responds to her carefully indifferent look with an open glare. "Why the fuck does everyone keep asking me that?" Because that's what it is, that's what's been strange lately, everyone wants to know-

Elizaveta doesn't move a muscle, but her face seems graver, her eyes more open and plain. Truthful.

"Well, do you _know_?"

And Gilbert's world flashes and sways, rotting clocks, anger, a piano melody he can't quite catch, Romano grabbing Feliciano's hand.

-x-

"Well, do you know?"

Gilbert blinks down at the chess pieces. It takes him a moment to realize he is sitting. The room is bathed in weighted midnight silence, save for the grandfather clock.

"What just…"

"Yes?"

He shakes his head, willing all of the strangeness away. The corners of his vision settle. "Nothing. It's nothing. But you said _J__edem das Seine." _

"Yes, I did."

"That has nothing to do with chess." He crosses his arms and leans back, frowning at the board. "'S a Prussian motto. 'To each his own.' It's about…rights and…punishment and rewards. Justice. And you're trying to tell me that it's why you think I'm bad at chess. Which I'm not."

A heavy sigh.

"No, that's not really what I was saying. But it does have to do with chess."

Gilbert watches his opponent's move as he listens.

"Chess represents war, and war has everything to do with justice – and nothing at all."

Gilbert snorts and makes his own move, one of the few he had considered. He's getting tired of this. "You sound like Francis on one of his moral days." He ignores the ping of anger at the name because it bewilders him completely. He buries it deep.

"Well, of course it depends on the way one looks at it. But according to _J__edem das Seine, _there is a punishment and a reward for everything. Or there should be."

"Yeah, well. Who gets to decide, then?"

"I wouldn't know. It's your own motto." Hands move forward, lightly grasp the edges of the table. "What piece did you just move?"

Gilbert smirks. "Nuh uh, that's cheating. If you weren't watching-"

"Gilbert."

Something is off now, and his smirk fades to hollowness, disappears entirely. He looks down at the board, eyes sweeping rapidly over the pieces. "It was…I moved the…"

He doesn't know.

He hears, "And which did _I _move, before that?" and his own hand reaches out to grip the table, bring himself closer to the checkered board. He can't quite grasp it, for the life of him he can't-

His opponent shifts forwards, leaning in, chair creaking loudly in the padded silence. A sudden repressed urgency, running like taut wire beneath the quiet voice. "I need you to think, Gilbert. Do you remember where the pieces are now? Are they the same as they were before?" And Gilbert is feeling a headache coming on.

"What the fuck are you going _on _about, I-"

"Do you remember how long it's been since the invasion has 'almost started?' How long you've been caught in the calm before the storm? Do you even remember how you got _here? _Where are the _pieces, _Gilbert?_" _

And something in the back of his head is spinning, spinning, out of control and the clock is tick tick _ticking _but he can't look back, doesn't know what he'll see, and the Italy brothers are holding hands.

He stops. Forces the ground back under his feet. Everything is fine.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Ughh, sorry for the wait. Life got distracting.

* * *

Everything is fine.

Gilbert lies in his room, tummy down and the side of his face squished into his pillow. The place is a mess as usual. Since Ludwig has been so busy he's been less likely to nag Gilbert about little unimportant things like a stolen plate of Roderich's strudel decaying under his bed, or the likelihood of some deadly fungus creeping up in his dirty underwear. Gilbert doesn't believe it for a second, and besides, this system is much more convenient for getting undressed at the end of a long day.

His eyes go on a roving trek, carefully avoiding looking straight at the nightstand in front of him. Bits of dinners past, a few antique toy soldiers from his younger days (he definitely doesn't play with them now, maybe), and a great, fading brown book sitting on his dresser. _Die Brüder Grimm. _Fairytales he had read to Ludwig when he was young. The stories would stretch out to fill the room like smoke, yearning for the Black Forest and all of its heathen glory. Dark things with strong morals and not always happy endings. Gilbert approved, thought Ludwig should see that life doesn't always end when you kiss the frog. Or throw it against the wall, as the case may be.

He makes one more sweeping inspection, then rips his eyes away from the background, reluctantly looking to the brass clock on his nightstand. It's eight o'clock. He shuts his eyes and turns quickly, opening them to stare up at the graying ceiling. He won't look again.

It's eight o'clock, and Ludwig is making dinner tonight, Gilbert can hear him downstairs moving pans around in the lower cupboards. It's going to be a bit late by the time they finally eat, but that's because Ludwig's been busy. It's eight o'clock, and Feliciano might be coming over for dinner, even though no one knows for sure if he was ever invited, but that's fine because he makes for good dinner conversation either way.

It's eight o'clock, and everything is normal. Everything is where it should be. There is nothing wrong here. Eight o'clock eight o'clock eight o'clock eight minutes past when they should have let him leave the capitol building, those bastards, he had wanted to be home by five. Now the sun is sinking as he jogs down the last steps outside. Roderich left for Austria last night, but he should be back by now and unwinding with a peaceful bit of musical stimulation begging to be interrupted. Gilbert can practically hear it already, parceled up and-

And. He stops for a moment, frowns. He thought he had heard the song, way out here, and now he has an uncomfortable nagging sensation in the back of his head that he's forgetting something. All that remains is silence, however, and he always leaves everything he can at the capitol so there's really nothing he _could _be forgetting. He takes the tram home more or less at peace. If he really has forgotten anything important then Ludwig will take care of it eventually.

He opens the front door to a barrage of sound.

It's Chopin, it has to be, loud and furious and strong, like passion straining at the bounds of set meters and strict chord progressions. It slams into him, pulls his stomach down into a grabbing empty pit. Roderich must be _furious _about something, he's never heard-

But Austria sits dignified, calm fingers producing the storm.

Gilbert has known Roderich for ages. This is no hyperbole. The piano is a typhoon of pure fury, and the pianist should not be this calm. Gilbert unfreezes himself from the doorway, comes to watch the fingers, blinding, fast as flames. But too fluid, yet.

And there is something utterly wrong here.

The music jars his vision, the physics around him. He sees this scene every day: reserved, uptight Roderich and his stiff back plunking away, slow and sure. This music does not fit the scene. It pours through the cracks in the room, through the room, into his pores. Something is shaking and shifting, the air feels flimsy and the music hard as diamond and his head is _pounding, _something is trying to rise through the floor, force itself out-

And Roderich's fingers have stopped but the music is still driving onwards, inwards. Cool violet eyes, clear and dispassionate looking down at him, and when did he end up on the ground? This isn't right, he had been in his room, it was eight o'clock and now it's barely past five, isn't it? What time-

"Look in the mirror."

Gilbert shakes his head, fights the pounding. The song is ending now, eerily independent of Roderich's deathly still hands. A slight calm returns to him in its wake, and he grasps onto it, fights to cling to something solid and present and this is real. The air is easier to breathe. He forces the thing back into the floor.

Everything is fine.

He focuses on the keys just above him, black and white and black like

-x-

Chess pieces, and he can't even tell which is which right now, he's trying to sort out where he left his knight.

"You keep fighting me." The voice is laden with disappointment and perhaps the slightest timbre of worry.

Gilbert laughs, harsh and too fast. "What do you want me to do, lose?"

Silence.

Gilbert feels his face slipping, his fingers clenched tight to the table. "Say something."

"You can't very well lose, or win, without knowing what you're playing."

Gilbert reaches out towards his king, touches the crown. Presses down. Feels the point pushing into his finger until it causes pain. "I'm playing chess. Here's my king."

"Yes, but where are the rest?"

"It doesn't matter!" He surprises himself with the venom in his own voice. "They're just pieces, they're not important, I don't need you telling me what to do. It's just chess."

"Calm down-"

"_Just fucking chess_, alright?" He pulls his finger back, rubs the indentation the piece has left on his index finger. Again he's met with silence, and he tries to glare up at the face of his opponent – but finds that he can't. Or rather, he can stare at it, _see_ it, take everything in only to have it slip out of his mind, like listening to a language he doesn't understand. His heart is pressing at his shirt, the pounding erratic. How hadn't he noticed it before? He hadn't known who it was from the beginning, and he can't remember the beginning. His breath is quickening and oh his _head-_

He looks to the board. The black king stands tall and proud, unbending.

It stands alone. There are no other pieces on the board.

He wonders if there ever were.

-x-

"…Fall, fall down! And here the verdict: 'The dancer will be executed the following morning…"

Broken pieces of logic, fitted together seamlessly in smooth French. Gilbert looks around him, frowns, shuts his eyes tight and lets them fly open again. People mill about the museum, staring up at the canvases as if they mean something and there's the melting clocks again.

"…her gems sacrificed to the heat of her body…"

"Why do we keep coming here?" he says loudly. "There's nothing interesting here."

"Surrealism is hardly boring, Gilbert. It's a wonderful trend. Like trapping-"

"The mind, I know, _Gott, _do you ever _shut up? _You said that last time." And the time before that, stretching into an infinity of unbroken mirror images.

Antonio gives him an uncomprehending smile. "This is the first time you two have come here, Gil."

He snaps, compressed rage forced outwards. "We've been coming here every fucking day for I don't even know how long! How long has – has it been?"

He has the huge, engulfing sense that he's standing on the edge of a large chasm, and the ground is breaking beneath him, but whatever is down there is dark and creeping and he doesn't know how deep it goes. He pulls himself away, reeling backwards from revelation. Focuses on his surroundings, pushes them to the front of his mind to keep him grounded. But it's hard, when the paintings are as chaotic as the abyss. He focuses instead on his friends' faces, but that only awakens something else that he's been trying to fight.

"And _you_-_" _he roars at Francis. "I'm not pissed at you, there is no reason for me to be, you haven't done anything to me in a long, long time and don't you fucking forget it!"

And the two of them are still and silent, everyone else moving as unimportant watercolor blurs. It doesn't fit, it isn't normal, isn't _right_-

Francis's honeyed voice is soft and solemn.

"Are you sure I've done nothing?"

_The dancer will be executed the following morning-_

"I'm sure! There's _nothing!"_ He stands, the chair's clatter loud in the dark, the only thing louder is that grandfather clock and it won't shut up.

"Gilbert-"

"_No!" _He swipes the king off of the chessboard, sends it flying until it hits something with the sound of breaking glass, probably something porcelain and expensive and Ludwig will kill him later, Ludwig-

"Listen to me, Gilbert. It's normal to be afraid. You've been through a great ordeal recently, but I need you to - "

"_Shut up." _It's getting harder to breathe again and the words sound rushed and buried and the walls are closer than they should be. "Just shut up. There is nothing wrong. This is _my life. _It's how it's always been, it's going to stay that way."

"I understand. You must feel safer here, in this time. But the world-"

Gilbert moves in an instant, grabs his opponent by the collar, the design of the clothes shifting through his focus like water in a sieve. He pulls his fist back. Bares his teeth. "Leave me alone."

A long silence. True silence. The tick of the clock has been chased away. When the voice returns, it sounds afraid.

"You can't do this. You can't let yourself sink, or you'll never surface again. This isn't like you. Wake-"

"Go _away!" _

His opponent gasps, and it sounds like dying. The board is already distant and indistinct. He lets the shirt collar become insubstantial and disappear, from his grasp and from his mind. The parlor is falling away, dissolving like tissue as he lets himself fall back. There is something soft inside of him, settling down for a long, blissful sleep. Drowning in silk.

Resistant images invade his mind, spiking jagged and painful into his vision. Antonio and a vague sunlight smile, Francis in his dress uniform, solemn with his hands behind his back and _here is the verdict, _and shapeless forms and a flower in her hair and there's Austria sitting at that damn piano _look in the mirror you fool or all is lost-_

I don't need you. Any of you.

He washes it away. Closes his eyes tight. Sinks into the comforting folds of his reality, a messy room and there's dinner downstairs. Maybe a nap-

He's suddenly so, so tired, and nothing sounds better.

There are words in the back of his head. They are soft and barely present, smothered in sleep, but like a pebble under the mattress they stick up at him, into him. Unfinished business. One last present from his opponent whom he has somehow killed, the chess player who was so urgent about…something.

_J__edem das Seine. _

He wrenches his eyes open. He's lying on his unmade bed, staring at the ceiling. The room is light, the lamp reflecting off the darkened window. It's quiet here, but not oppressively. It's more of an absence of sound than any true silence. Roderich is not playing. He stretches his arms, rubbing the tiredness from his eyes. His limbs feel heavy, and a part of him just wants to go back to sleep.

There is a tapping sound at his window. Gilbert twists his neck to see, noticing that parts of his body feel sore. He's had the strangest dream, and he's starting to wonder just how long he was asleep. Pierre sits on his windowsill, letter clasped in his beak. Gilbert stands, navigates his way through the mess on his floor to unlatch the window and slide it open. The small bird hops onto his nightstand, cocking its head curiously. Gilbert thinks it's cute. Maybe one day he'll get himself a pet besides Ludwig's dogs. He rubs the bird's head affectionately.

"Weird dream." Ironic even, how he had spent the majority of the dream convincing himself that he wasn't dreaming. A waste of time. He takes the rolled-up message. It's funny how Francis works sometimes, that he can still choose to use such ancient methods to send a simple letter, even now, after the…no, before the war.

He stares down at the paper, weighs it in him palm. Crisp, clean paper. Light. Running his finger over an edge, he feels the threat of sharpness. It feels just like he would expect it to. He unrolls it, holding the ends so that he can read the message written in curled, elegant script.

It's an invitation to a museum in Barcelona. Antonio wants to show them the melting clocks.

Gilbert rereads the letter twice, then puts it down on his nightstand. Pierre stays and stares unblinkingly, no doubt waiting for his reply.

He feels a strange sense of calm now as he shifts things around on his dresser until he finds paper and pen. The panic of his last moments with the chess player has gone, leaving him free to consider the possibilities. Difficult concepts have never been high on the list of Gilbert's interests. He prefers things to be as straightforward as possible, preferably quick and maybe a bit showy as well. But there is something very important that he has to make sure of before he goes on with his life, visiting a museum with Francis and Antonio and waiting for the invasion to begin.

He sits on his bed, facing Pierre. If he didn't know better he'd think that the bird looks impatient. "Just hold on a second. I need to check something."

He stares down at the paper, gathering himself, and then looks up, straight at his brass clock. The time is eight forty-six. He closes his eyes, memorizes the numbers. That was the easy part. After the next move there is no going back - but strangely, he feels fine with that. He feels ready.

He opens his eyes. The clock says three seventeen.

Oh.

He is consumed by a numb sense of discovery. So that's what's been happening. It makes sense, now, that they've all been trying to get him to look. Like warning him, in a stupid, roundabout way and he wouldn't expect his friends to do any differently. Even if they're not real.

Which, he realizes, they are not.

He blinks hard and then looks back to the clock one more time. Now there are three hands, twisting and turning against each other until it's impossible to make any sense of what he's seeing. Like clocks dying on the beach.

Well, then.

He stands, feeling the way the whole room is off-balance slightly. It's remarkable how monumentally different everything feels now. More hollow. Details are blurred, and things on his floor only exist when he's looking directly at them. It's like a lucid dream, except without the exhilarating feeling of control – somehow he doesn't want to play with the foundations of this reality, in case they come collapsing in on him and he is buried underneath.

But if this world follows a pattern – and it does – he knows where Roderich will be.

* * *

Notes: The Brothers Grimm published the first edition of their collection in 1814. Later editions during their lifetimes contained revisions because the stories weren't "child appropriate." Prussia, needless to say, read Ludwig the original, though the others would have been published by the time the North German Federation was formed in 1866. In the original story, the princess does not kiss the frog, instead throwing it against a wall to turn it into the handsome prince.

In most instructions for invoking lucid dreams, the dreamer is told that one of the ways to tell that you're dreaming is to check the clock. Often the numbers won't make sense or will change.


	3. Chapter 3

He gets to the parlor. It would be so easy for Gilbert to convince himself that he walked down the stairs, but he knows better now. Thinking back, all he can remember is a blurred underwater transition jerking him forward, then standing here staring at Roderich's hands.

Roderich is pressing each key down with his standard dexterity, but no sound is coming out. His face is calm and collected and his eyes are half-lidded. Eyelashes long. Gilbert has always thought his features were girly. Refined and pretty and girly. Now Gilbert presses one finger down on the keys himself, but draws back in a flash – the ivory burns him.

"Why did that hurt?" he asks plainly.

"Because you aren't supposed to touch this."

"No, I mean…why would anything hurt me here?"

"Because you are thick enough to convince yourself to feel pain."

Gilbert sneers. "What, no 'pinch me, I'm dreaming?'"

"No." And he goes back to what he was doing. Gilbert tries to watch his hands, but finds that he can't pick out specifics about which keys he's pushing down. He steps back, blows out air. He knows that in the corner of the room there is a gilded golden mirror, hanging at shoulder height and immaculately clean. Its presence is strong now, demanding as the clocks as been. Something creeps around his insides and he doesn't look quite yet.

"Don't you have something to _do _with yourself?" Roderich demands, as if to break the unnatural silence. "An invasion to help plan, perhaps?"

"Cut the crap," Gilbert says, voice tinged with annoyance. "The war is over."

And he freezes.

It is. The war is over, it has been for…he doesn't really know how long ago it ended, but it is over. He remembers muddy trenches, salutes to the troops, Ludwig carrying Feliciano to safety. Kiku's broken voice as he explains his charred arm, burnt by a weapon the world had never seen before. Arthur's smug face. And Francis was his _enemy, _just for this time, they had marched in and beaten him down until the damn "hero" had come flying in and pushed straight to Berlin-

But that isn't everything, it can't be. He's fought wars with so many nations over the course of time. The anger never sticks. There must be something worse-

Roderich snorts. "It certainly took you long enough to realize." He keeps playing into the quiet.

Gilbert scowls. "It's not like I had much of a choice." But he's starting to realize that that might not be true.

The silence stretches on until he can't quite bear it.

"So…the mirror, yeah?"

Roderich nods, and the motion draws Gilbert's eyes until he realizes that the piano is on fire. Flames lick through the cracks between keys, caressing the pianist's nimble fingers. They run up the dark wooden legs, smoke rising from the strings in the body. Silently flickering, sparks flying out and fading to nothing in imaginary air. And it's funny, because for all Gilbert knows it's always been that way.

He sits down next to him. The bench is untouched by flames. Roderich glances at him sidelong, but otherwise doesn't react. Gilbert can still feel the mirror, it's pressing and very important but he figures it can wait just a moment more.

Because, well. If this is a dream, he has to take advantage of it _somehow. _

His smirk is a machete.

He wraps an arm behind Roderich, letting his hand come to rest on his waist, and reaches up with his other hand to push on the pianist's cheek, quick and demanding and into perfect position for him to force his lips onto Roderich's delicate ones. His features are so _girly, _and he probably doesn't realize how annoyingly pretty they are. And Gilbert wouldn't give him the satisfaction of letting him know, not in real life. So he uses this opportunity to explore Roderich with his tongue, demanding and strong and just like he would dream it, if he did. Like jazz music. And Roderich sits passively and lets him. No resistance to his warm, cloistered invasion. This, if anything, is what makes Gilbert draw back.

The pianist's eyes are glassy and empty. The hands are still moving, pale as death mimicking life. Like a slow marionette, his head turns back to the burning keys. A corpse, halfheartedly animated. Death in aristocracy.

Gilbert laughs shakily. "Well I'm going to _have _to get out of here, aren't I? Everyone would be such a boring fuck."

Something tastes rotten on his tongue, and he resists the urge to be sick.

There is a gilded mirror in the corner.

He knows instinctively, as is the way in dreams, that in order to get out he needs to look. He also knows that it is not the exit, just the beginning of the escape. And he knows, beyond a doubt, that the idea of looking makes his knees feel frustratingly weak. Because whatever he sees, it will not be his own reflection.

Some ferocious dream beast lives there, the nightmare that he doesn't even know. Some bizarre, twisted version of himself, perhaps, or something from his young days, fears that stalk children in the night. And he's Prussia, he isn't_ afraid _of course_, _that would be ridiculous. But he doesn't want to look. Doesn't want to know. Ridiculous.

"What will I see?" he asks loudly.

Roderich doesn't respond. Why, he wonders, is piano music the one thing that never fits here? But he's not going to gain anything by trying to figure it out, so he takes a deep, steady breath and closes his eyes. He stands and walks to the mirror by sheer force of memory, in the sliding motion of dreams.

His stomach twists. It's just an image, he tells himself, no need to hesitate. Just a look should do it. And he opens his eyes.

The mirror is empty.

The parlor, portrayed perfectly behind the glassy sheen, but no one in the foreground, no _Gilbert _standing there and the mirror is empty. A cold, dead horror fills him from the fingertips, and the room's image is twisting in front of him until only the sight of his own nothingness remains and the mirror is _empty. _

Panicked chaos. He is thrown back, back into what should be the burning piano but instead turns into black liquid mist behind him, the world falling apart like so much concrete and dust, blown to smithereens, roaring cosmic and miniscule and brothers holding hands. Panic and loss and darkness, and there's the temptation, ever brief, to hide in this nothingness. Sleep.

Instead he pushes, creates shapes. Refracts thick blackness into prism colors. Remembers.

Watercolors spin and blur and tint towards luscious green and summer blue. A great spray of energy turns to a fountain, standing tall and majestic in the middle of a courtyard, fringed by square trimmed bushes. A marble woman stands at the top, scantily clad in flowing robes, surrounded in descending levels populated by figures of beautiful mortal men and women reaching towards her. Real people mill about outside her pool, dressed in vibrant, extravagant clothing, tall powdered wigs and wide silken skirts. Casual conversation floats gaudily on the air, amidst the laughter of children.

He knows this place in present day. He knew it in this time, too. He remembers how the sun beat down on his own formal clothes, hot and itchy in their weight. It was inescapable in the gardens of Versailles in summertime.

"Do not play in the fountain," Francis warns. "As tempting as it may be, we are in the company of nobility, remember."

"Of course I remember," he says, less forcefully than he had intended.

And he does.

The next thing Gilbert thinks is that Francis's shoe buckles are huge. They are the fashion statement of this time, large and extravagant on his heeled black shoes. This is the Enlightenment, the peak of Francis's glory, and he is radiant. Half of the world is crushing on him. Drops flit from the fountain and catch in long blonde locks; his hair is tied back with a pure white ribbon. His suit is azure blue and fringed in gold. He stands straight, yet there is something languid about his posture. He is comfortable here at the top of the world.

He gestures grandly towards the palace in the distance. "If you're lucky, perhaps you will see the queen. She likes to visit the gardens this time of day."

Gilbert's French always sounds too rough, Francis tells him as much, though he had spent so much time learning it. Old Fritz loved the language. "You did something to me." The words are not an accusation, not yet. He is stating a fact.

Francis's smile falls, though the sun still gives him an ethereal glow.

"Yes."

Gilbert looks off into the fountain, absently following the lines of the spray. "Besides going to war. We knew we were going to have to do that. We were still fr–" He searches for more distant words. Safer. "We still went out sometimes, up until you actually declared war."

Francis doesn't answer.

"So what was it, huh?" Gilbert turns back to his solemn face. "What did you do that was so horrible?"

Francis has the decency to look ashamed. Electric eyes speak volumes. He opens his mouth as if to reply, then thinks better of it and closes again.

Gilbert scowls. "You're not going to tell me, are you?"

A small, sad smile plays on Francis's lips before he speaks.

"_Courageous like a stamp  
he went his way  
tapping softly in his hands  
to count his steps  
his heart red as a boar  
beat beat  
like a pink green butterfly."_

Something stirs in Gilbert's memory, mismatched ideas like odd socks and conjoined twins. Poetry free of logic.

"_Now and then  
he planted a little satin flag  
When he had walked a lot  
he sat down to rest…"_

Francis takes a deep breath, meets Gilbert's eyes.

"…_and fell asleep."_

And without knowing why, with sense as fragmented as Francis's, he replies, "I didn't fall. I was _pushed_."

Francis nods.

Gilbert is going to continue, maybe scream at him for the sin that he still doesn't understand, when Francis interrupts, eyes begging understanding.

"_But since that day there are many clouds in the sky  
many birds in the trees  
and there's a lot of salt in the sea  
There are also lots of other things."_

The words hang in artificial summer air.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Francis laughs, strong and tinged with regret. "It means just what it says."

And Gilbert remembers this poem from not so long ago. Hearing Francis and Antonio discuss it, after the museum. He hadn't listened to a word they said, but apparently it stuck somewhere in the back of his mind and was recycled with the endless stream of conversations and insults and Feliciano folding paper airplanes that makes up this dream. It's all true, all drawn from his real life.

He realizes that the passersby are gone, and the fountain has stopped running.

It's a hollow imitation, really.

Francis is still watching him carefully.

"Well, what do you want?" Gilbert sneers. "An official pardon?"

Slowly Francis smiles, bright and pure this time, and Gilbert mutters, "Pansy."

It looks like it might rain soon. The fountain is covered in something like mold.

"What's happening here, anyway?"

"It's akin to fever dreaming," Francis responds, glancing to the darkening sky.

"How do I stop?"

Francis looks at him as if he's asked the stupidest question in the universe.

"You wake up." He walks to the fountain, hands dignified behind his back. The pool is dry and cracked now. "You should probably hurry." He raises one hand to gesture to a pathway to his right. It takes a sharp turn to the left after a dozen yards, and the trees grow twisted and wild. Gilbert begins to walk.

"And…" Francis's back is to him now. "You need to stop existing _next _to people and begin to exist _with _them."

Gilbert wrinkles his nose. Such a pansy. He walks backwards so as to not lose time. "Why?"

"Because," his words are careful and deliberate, "You will need support if you are to survive what comes next. You will need something to come back to."

"To wake up?" He is already far enough away to have to raise his voice. Yet he can hear Francis's soft words perfectly.

"No. I'm so sorry, but no. I'm talking about _after_ you wake up. There will be no peace."

-x-

The paved cobblestone of the courtyard yields suddenly to free earth as Gilbert turns the corner. Tall, wild grass snakes around gnarled roots, scraping up against his chainmail legs. The light that filters through the leaves is that of midday. He slows, walks a ways in caution, metal footsteps muffled. The trees press in close, a pattern determined by nature herself without the mundane meddling of a human gardener. Things seem younger here.

Untamed.

With a force that sends him stumbling, suddenly he knows where he is.

He begins to run, pushes through the trees with the force of conquest behind him, armor weighing next to nothing as he knows, he _knows - _one last battalion of branches shoved away and he sees open plains soaring into the distance, across gentle slopes and hills and what looks like a castle on the horizon. Clouds skitter through a sky more azure than he has seen in hundreds of years. The wind is brisk and strong with the bite of autumn.

He knows where he is – where he has to be – because all is right with the world. _His_ world.

And the child called Teuton smiles, crosses his arms proudly against the red cross on his tiny chest.

He steps forward and an apple hits him promptly in the head.

"_Ow, _the hell-"

He rounds on the perpetrator, who stands lounging against the old stone wall, traces of hay caught in his long brown-blonde hair. Or her.

"You gotta watch your back better 'n that, ya runt." Dirt streaks her cheeks.

And it's odd seeing Elizaveta in this, her oldest form, when she was still all gruff bravado and childish masculinity, horses thundering through fire. He knows more about her now, through the lens of experience and error, but even so it's tempting to just brand her a "he" and leave it that way. Because that's who she was, then. A rival, a hunting mate. Enemy in brother in arms.

But knowledge outweighs common sense here, and it is a "she" that pushes herself off of the wall with a smirk, then walks, firm and confident, to face Gilbert. Chainmail hangs from her small body like it did in the old days, heavy and flat and deceptive. She stands with less than a foot between them, despite his warning snarl.

"You're kind of stupid."

"Am not!" he fires back without a second thought.

"Are too!"

"Am not!" He leans in and balls his fists, ready to tussle, but his opponent just laughs and ruffles his hair which he _hates, _and he's just about ready to tackle her when she says, "You miss me." And he doesn't know what to say to that, so he just starts talking and hopes it'll come out right. It's worked before.

"Nuh-uh, no way. You're too weird. And even if I did, that would be your fault anyway. You got all girly and dumb."

She snorts in obvious disbelief and stoops down to grab the dirty, off-red apple, ignoring his fighting stance entirely. The fruit is small, but not small enough for her to wrap her child's hand around completely. "Do I look dumb to you?"

He can't help but give a tiny snicker, fists slowly lowering.

"Save it, churl." She straightens in a hurry, thrusting her arm back as if she means to hurl the apple at him from close range. Gilbert most definitely does _not _flinch, but his hands fly back up to defend his face. She laughs, loud and unrestrained by any form of etiquette or lace. Gilbert yells something obscene and punches her in the shoulder, but she doesn't seem to mind.

She tosses the fruit in the air, tracing its path with her eyes. "Anyway, I just grew up different than I thought. It happens sometimes."

Gilbert crosses his arms. "You grew up boring."

She raises an eyebrow and crosses her arms right back. "That's a lie. Sometimes we just…grow up different, is all. Sometimes we gotta. You did."

Gilbert scowls. "That's different. I was still me."

"I'm still me, too."

He squints towards her sharp green eyes, and she immediately takes up his challenge. They stare at each other with every impression of anger, eye boring holes in one another's pupils as each of them refuses to back down from the contest. She's telling the truth, he realizes, or at least she thinks she is. That look doesn't change, whether Elizaveta is shouting coarse words and shooting arrows at his retreating back or arguing with him over grocery bags. Still, he has to admit he likes this version better.

Or at least he does until she hits him over the head with the apple again.

"You fucking cheater!"

He lunges, and the two of them topple over each other, pinching and scratching and pulling hair, wild as the trees.

Gilbert doesn't know how – though he's sure by now it doesn't matter – but they end up back by the wall, Elizaveta leaning her back against its rough, solid presence, Gilbert's head in her lap. Her hand aimlessly pats his hair, right where the apple had hit it, and the silence is only broken by birdsong. He wonders if there is a difference between the way animals sounded, then and now, but he can't bring himself to remember. Details exist, but they are blurred. Impressionism, he remembers. Francis. And it's funny how different the coiffed, civilized world of the Enlightenment is from this one, but he doesn't laugh.

Instead he says, "I think I'm dying."

Elizaveta doesn't respond for a long time.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Thanks for sticking this one out, guys! Notes at the bottom.

* * *

The apple is in Gilbert's hand again, though he isn't sure it was a moment before. He studies it numbly, imagines each little detail as it appears. When he takes a bite, it tastes like an apple, or how he would pretend an apple would taste. Elizaveta is not looking at him, gazing off instead into the vivid sky. Maybe this place wasn't so beautiful in the real world. Maybe that's just his memories, filtered through nostalgia like rainwater refraction.

Elizaveta tugs at his hair absently. "Sometimes we grow up different," she says. "Sometimes we gotta do what we can to stay alive. Go…sideways instead of up, you know? As long as we're moving."

Gilbert turns onto his side, resettling himself on the uneven ground. The details are stronger here, he realizes. It's easier to pretend because this place and time is deep inside of him, rooted like stone in his gut. "'M not a mind reader, ya know. Talk like a real person would. Jus' tell me."

"You just…you gotta be ready to do anything," she tries again, quieter this time. "You don't have to stop now." He feels that impression of Feliciano and Romano, fingers interlocked, and his childish head is starting to hurt again because it doesn't make any sense.

"But…"

They stay in silence for a moment more, and Gilbert tries to remember what a real apple tastes like, and maybe he doesn't remember in the first place and that's scary.

"But I'm _tired." _

And suddenly it's the truth, it's always been, the words paint themselves over him, crack the dam built by bricks of year over year in his mind and he realizes yes –

"I know," she says.

"I'm so tired."

He lets the fruit roll out of his hand and turns to bury his face in Elizaveta's coarse fabric. It should scratch at his eyes, but it doesn't and he doesn't even know what that means anymore but he's grateful.

He feels a light slap on the back of his head, but Elizaveta doesn't move or force him off. "I know," she says. "And you can rest now, if you want to. Loads of people do. You're…sort of in-between. You just gotta choose. You can go rest."

And he doesn't think it's her voice that he hears last, warm and familiar and just on the frayed edges of memory, _Rest with me._

The world is still. Rest with me.

Or.

He breathes in, but the air is painfully counterfeit. Looking up to the sky again, he feels as though he could fall in, gravity shifting around him like the rotational faces of the globe. But the sky here is not as blue as he first thought.

In fact, he thinks that he can remember this image from his last moment awake. He pulls living memories like air from the surface, sending ripples across his imaginary plane. He feels things stirring somewhere, slow and strong and rising, and the realizations just keep tumbling over him, don't they? Like water mills, or those little Chinese fountains.

That day, the sky was a heady rush of azure glory, solid and real, and this petty _imitation_ cannot compare.

_But since that day there are many clouds in the sky  
many birds in the trees  
and there's a lot of salt in the sea  
There are also lots of other things._

He remembers what apples taste like.

Something echoes down his spine like war drums, power sizzling in his fingertips.

Or you can live.

Lightning explodes across his sky and the plains grow dark, and he is sitting on cracked, decrepit land with twilight burning on the horizon and he is not a child anymore.

It is as if the storm from imitation Versailles has finally caught him, run him down through smoke rising from dead earth and vicious winds snapping at his bare arms. Desolation stretches as far as he can see.

Coarse syllables like sacrificial knives shred the air from his throat.

"_What time is it?" _

There is a figure before him, colossal in its power, clothed in strong geometric fabric in stark, overpowering color and contrast clear as bone. Limbs like smooth, living porcelain. There is a phoenix emblazoned on its shining crown.

When Feliks smiles his teeth are heathen-sharp.

"_Well, do you know?" _

His voice echoes with thunder and something beyond himself. Gilbert loses his words. This presence is far beyond anything he has seen in his old enemy before, yet there is something distinctly _Feliks _here, people and earth and spinning proud patterns.

The Feliks thing tilts his head, and one eye is cloaked by hair spun from straw to gold and back.

"_You just don't want to admit it. You know that it's time, don't you? But you're stupid and stubborn and don't want to go."_

Gilbert forces his voice back into his control – "Damn right I'm stubborn!" – but his legs are locked beneath him and he remains collapsed on hard earth, as in a dream when running never, never works.

A seamless transition and Feliks is closer, leaning down and in until his presence is suffocating. His eyes are deep and burning and the phoenix is not just in the crown.

"_Do you think you deserve to go back, after all you've done?"_

Despite Gilbert's best efforts, he is caught by those flaming pits that pass for irises.

"_Do you even deserve heaven, or should I send you to hell where you belong? My people, dying, falling beneath your zealot blade." _The voice shakes with righteous anger now, but Feliks still wears a rictal smile, malicious and ready for revenge. _"We have a long history, you and I."_

"You don't get to decide!" Gilbert shouts too loudly. "You're not my fucking god." And if he felt he could spit on that face, he would.

"_But it's _your_ motto," _the voice blinks in mocking innocence. _"_Jedem das Seine._ To each his own. Each good deed has a reward, and each sin…"_ He draws his sword, and the ringing sound could cut through diamond. Gilbert panics.

"But I can't – I'm not the only one who's sinned!" He feels control spiraling away again, and he struggles for each inconsequential breath. _Forgive us our trespasses-_

And there is a sword, piercing thin and clean through Gilbert's chest. He opens his mouth, but finds that he can't make a sound. His eyes widen in unspoken agony as he slumps around the blade.

Feliks's bloodthirsty smile is gone now, but his eyes are sparking. _"We are all sinners. And we must serve as one another's consciences. That is why they are killing you, isn't it? They don't even want you back."_

And he remembers.

The dissolution of the Free State of Prussia, at the hands of the Allies. They heaped the blame for the war on him; they insisted that someone must die and Gilbert just stared up at the perfect, desperate azure sky.

So he is dying now, in his last throws. Fever-dreaming the last drops of his life away. The Allies stand in a ghostly row before his mind's eye, solemn and proud and righteous. Francis, dulled, with his hands behind his back. _Here_ _is the verdict-_

"_It's time." _

_The dancer will be executed-_

He mouths something, desperate words around the pain, struggling to make a sound. Feliks leans closer to hear.

"I…bu– "

_Fall, fall down._

"Bull…shit."

The world stops.

Feliks is still as the reaper, poised almost comically, hunched over Gilbert's body, whose torso dangles from his sword like a rag doll. Blood oozes lazily from the wound. _"What did you say?"_

And Gilbert finds his words.

"Bullshit. You're not – you don't get to decide. None of you get to - no one _fucking decides_ if I have the right to live except for _me."_

Feliks snarls. _"Jedem das-"_

"I know my damned motto. I believe it. But it's _my _motto, and_ I _get to decide. So just – just fuck off!" The last words come out in a whirl of last-ditch effort, and leave him panting for breath around the sword. But he can't feel the metal anymore.

There is a long pause, and his enemy's gaze is strong, singeing him to the core.

"_Very well."_ Feliks smirks, pulls the sword out as easily as if his flesh and organs were water, leaving Gilbert empty on the ground. _"What do you think?"_

And Gilbert feels, with perfect clarity, thousands of years. Every time his steel pierced flesh, every time his people left the villages of heathens behind, burning, children screaming for their mothers as their intestines dangled into the streets. Fathers in the ovens. Every sin, both that he had regretted and those he swore he never would. The death of an old man and his flute. And the weight is an entire ocean pressing on top of him, and he feels as though he might drown.

But that isn't all. Not by a long shot. He remembers other faces, other times. Brightness, reluctant chores around the house, and the taste of apples. Maybe a stolen kiss. And each feather-memory weighs more than ten oceans. And perhaps this is selfish, because the good memories are mainly for him and the bad ones are for others. And he knows this makes him a bad person. But he remembers helping people too, and he remembers trying, really trying, and the honey-sweetness he tastes makes his breath catch. The world is so different now, but parts of it are the same. And he just wants –

When he looks up, Feliks's face is solemn and careful. Gilbert gulps down his tremors and smiles sharply.

"Sorry. It's not time yet. For all I know it might _never_ be."

Because no matter what-

Feliks gives him a long level glance, and nods.

"_But can you face what comes next?"_

He feels a warning chill down his spine, and the air turns from cold to frigid, the wind howling through his clothes like agony. Somewhere an invisible sun disappears and the vulnerable world is crushed under layers of inky night. Something rumbles in the blindness, and he thinks it might be guttural words.

No matter what, it's worth it.

Gilbert stands.

-x-

The world implodes, ruptures down the middle through light and screaming sound. He sees frozen plains stretching off into eternity, hard dark tundra forbidding growth and escape, and the _sky-_

There are clouds, huge and black, turning with an awful power into a solid vortex, shades of a cyclone and from the center there is something that is not quite wind and not quite a voice. A jagged language, low and dark and creeping winter, and Gilbert can put a name to it, if he wants to. Ivan's voice catches in the gale again, high and childish yet exactly the same.

And all he can do is stand and stare up at the eye of the storm, the maw of some great and awful creature that will swallow him up. Everything he ever was, gone into a grasping black hole that sends waves of wrath into his frame like screaming bullets.

All the world leers, bending down around him like a sick concave reflection of who he is and what he will have to be. His knees bend beneath the strain and it's all he can do to keep standing, stars winking out behind the clouds, thousands of miles away in some glassy, impossible sky and this is his _future, _should he choose it, the devil incarnate leaking over every icy steppe in the waking world.

The thing laughs, and reality shakes and slides.

And he has to go forward, there is no other way, forward or down forever. But his legs won't move.

He feels something warm enclosing his left hand. He looks down to see other fingers, calloused and a shade darker, wrapped around his own. Antonio meets his eyes with a calm smile, and he feels something solid against his palm, a circle of points pressing into his skin. The wind roars into his bones as though it alone has the power to drag him to hell.

Bewildered, he feels another hand on his right, pale and slender. Francis's smile is wistful, but just as calm, and he feels a sharp point threatening to break skin with the strength of his grasp, that sentimental bastard.

He draws his hands back to look. Two chess pieces rest in his palms. In his left, the rook. In his right, the bishop.

He blinks back at them, turning his head from one to the other. Francis raises a delicate eyebrow, just bordering on the sarcastic. "_With _us, remember?"

He feels other shapes at his back, hands pressing things towards him. Pieces for his chessboard, old allies and enemies alike.

"Ready?" Wind whips through Antonio's hair and Gilbert watches how it sparks his tranquil eyes like war paint. One second, two.

Gilbert smirks, just the slightest bit, and faces forward.

There is a path, leading under the storm. Ludwig stands directly in the center.

He looks terrible, the wind tearing through his crisp blonde hair until it is a wild mess. The shadowed circles under his eyes suggest that he has not slept for days, and there is some sort of irony there that Gilbert doesn't have the time to think about right now. He stands tall in his military uniform, medals shining bright, glinting back the storm, but there is something lost in his eyes.

And it takes Gilbert a moment to remember that this is what his brother looked like during surrender.

He tries to move forward, but the wind buffets him back like a wall. A tall, glacial wall and he feels as though he knows this part.

Ludwig must see him now, because it looks like he's shouting something.

Sideways instead of up. The Italy brothers holding hands.

And the timing is incredible, isn't it? A power vacuum created just as another power falls. There is something splitting his brother in two up there, and the other half could be –

He takes a step.

The storm howls, red splashes and horror fairytales of dark forests in Siberian winter. Witches, Baba Yaga with long, sharp fingers to snatch up children in the night.

But Gilbert has his own fairytales to protect him. Dark Grimm, with their stark but twisting moral order and there has to be a _choice _somewhere so you can decide which morals to take as your own. Which rights and punishments and people to let populate your world.

And Ludwig stretches out his hand. Palm up. A trusting question in his eyes, and he hasn't looked at his brother like that in a long, long time.

Two more steps and Gilbert has already crossed the distance, a brush of their fingers and his world is on fire.

He rips into his brother, forces himself through his spirit, blind power mingled with hope and agony and maybe that's a little bit of pure trust. He takes something that was meant to be a continuation of Ludwig but would serve just as well as his own. He lets his brother in, becomes his other half. Francis would be proud, but he knows he _needs _to, because the world will be dark and unforgiving now and he knows it.

I choose earth over your goddamned heaven.

He feels hands pushing at his back, forcing him towards the swirling dark mass in the sky, freezing rain and thunder like cathedrals collapsing but it's worth it it's _worth it_ and he goes willingly.

Lightning slices through chaos, and he is close enough to feel every hair on his body stand on end as the light bounces through the sky, rattles like a trapped beast in the center of the storm, and someone is screaming and the piano is pounding as the light grows stronger and brighter until his entire vision is one ineffable flash.

And there is a perfect stillness, in that blind light.

He sees shapes moving, just barely, and slowly his vision returns.

The light doesn't completely fade, and the parlor is bright and gentle. Peaceful early morning sun gives each object an ethereal halo glow. It feels thinner here, like swimming in shallow water, and the colors are blurred. He's almost free.

"Is that your final decision?" his opponent asks. The faded board is filled with pieces. "There is peace in the afterlife, you know."

Gilbert smirks, leans back in his chair. "Not really my style. It'd get boring as hell after-"

He looks up and the words die in his throat.

Dust motes float lazily through his opponent's glowing gray hair, and the wrinkles around his mouth deepen into laugh lines with his smile.

There have been times, during his convoluted escape, that Gilbert thought he had lost his words. That in itself was strange, for him. But now he isn't sure he'll ever find them again, faced as he is by this memory, blue eyes lit up like eternity.

And he knows, beyond a doubt, that everything that came before was nothing. This is the hardest part of all.

"That's true. And I'm glad for it." A yellow bird ripples its way into reality to perch on Fritz's outstretched fingers. He examines it carefully. "You'll have to forgive me," the old man says. "There is…of course, there is a selfish part of me that wishes…" His smile reminds Gilbert of Francis's, that tinge of sadness that shouldn't be there. Suddenly all he wants to do is erase it.

"I know," he says hurriedly. "You-"

Fritz shakes his head with a strange sternness and tosses the bird. It flies out of sight and form. "That really isn't your style, is it? You are a thing of life, even when the rest of us have been worn down to our bones."

Fritz reaches out to just barely brush Gilbert's cheek.

"Ah, listen," he says, drawing back, and it's all Gilbert can do to stop himself from grabbing that hand. "Someone is playing Mozart. Quite well, I may add. A pity whom the pianist is." His lip curls in wry distaste and Gilbert remembers that expression, just like he remembers everything else with crystalline clarity.

He hears the piano trickling through the crevices, and he feels, in a terrifying flash, his eyelids gently closed, his body sprawled horizontally on soft cushions. Life pulsing through his veins and that's been Roderich's playing all this time, resonating from the real world. He pushes his sense aside, just for another moment, but it lingers there on the edge of consciousness. His true body huge against this flickering, dying little room.

"I could-"

"No, you couldn't, _mon pays." _And it's French, of course it is. It was always French.

Fritz ruffles his hair. The sound of the piano is more real than anything else in this room. It always has been, except –

Fritz's hand ghosts over his head and he realizes that the world bends around it. The figures in the dream had been a part of the illusion; they had fit seamlessly into its endless flow of creation and destruction. But Fritz and the piano haven't fit from the beginning. Suddenly he can't breathe again and before his mind has caught up the words are tumbling over each other in a frantic escape.

"Are you – you're _here." _The realization crashes down and he can't focus anymore, his eyes aren't working properly and Fritz is just as real as he is, maybe.

Fritz's laugh echoes with old court banter. "Maybe. Who's to say for certain? I wanted to help you_. _Though…I must offer the other option as well_."_

And Gilbert searches that face through watercolors, looking for every last hint of meaning.

He feels Mozart pushing him upwards like a cool breeze in summer, and this world's colors are dimming, breaking like waves on the solid shore.

There are so many things he could say, here and now, that he may never get to say again. But Gilbert has never been good with words.

Somewhere he is lying down, cheek pushed openmouthed into the cushions, his eyes closed against the music and the light.

So instead he smiles with everything he has left.

"You just _watch_ me, old man."

And this chapel of a room bubbles and fades like foam.

-x-

Man has always had a fascination with the afterlife. It permeates his dreams, his wars, his dying breath. The idea that there is something else, something _better _beyond, whether it be richer or more glorious or more peaceful–

Well. It isn't for everyone.

Of course, only a select stubborn few have a choice in the matter.

-x-

A sudden gasp wracks Gilbert's frame, a brief, spastic struggle against the couch cushions and worn old blankets pulled up to his chin. The room is strong and clear and so ridiculously real that it's a wonder he could have mistaken anything else for this, this perfect, earthy act of _being_. His heart is pounding, and it feels wonderful. The music, purer and louder than he remembered, stops abruptly and the pianist turns. Even though Gilbert is still seeing through a blurred curtain, Roderich looks so shocked under those sleepless shadows and slipping glasses that he has to say something.

"Bet you missed me," his voice croaks, and then he _laughs. _

That makes his head pound and his body feels cold and sick and like he hadn't moved in days, but he's alive. There is a bird singing outside the parlor window.

"Play your fucking song," he says, tasting salt on his lips.

* * *

Gratuitous note time.

February 25, 1947 – the Allies officially dissolved Prussia, as per one of their war aims. Prussia had no independent power at this point, since laws in 1934 and 1935 gave all of the former states' powers to the centralized government. But technically, Prussia still existed.

It should also be noted that, following a long history of Shit that Went Down between Prussia/Teutonic Knights and Poland, Prussian territory that had been given back to Poland in the Treaty of Versailles was re-annexed in WWII. After the war, some formerly Prussian land was then given back – again – to Poland.

In most instructions for invoking lucid dreams, the dreamer is told that one of the ways to tell that you're dreaming is to check the clock. Often the numbers won't make sense or will change.

Poems used:  
"Good Day Good Evening" – Robert Desnos  
"Ideal Mistress" – Robert Desnos  
"Sports Articles" – Philippe Soupault

Aaand just in case you care, here is a list of songs that may or may not have had a huge effect on this story:  
"Canvas" – Imogen Heap  
"Judah (Reprise)" – After the Sirens  
"Goodnight, Travel Well" – The Killers (Pretty much on repeat for the whole last chapter)  
"Swimming" – Florence + the Machine (THIS THIS THIS. And no I don't think it can also be seen as a ridiculously sentimental PruAus song, what are you talking about. Cough.)

So anyway, thank you for reading!


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